Words have power. They can cut deep, creating lasting scars in one’s psyche, or they can comfort, console, encourage, and inspire. Words can also convince and persuade when used in a cogent argument, as when the daughters of Tzelafchad approached Moshe to voice their claim of inheritance over their father’s land in last week’s parasha.…

Parashat Pinchas has much to say about zealotry and peace, and the messages certainly remain worthy of examination today. Consider the following situation: A religious zealot witnesses a person flagrantly violating religious standards of behavior. Acting in the name of God, she picks up the nearest available weapon and violently slays the sinner.…

Speech is central in the story of Balak and Balaam, from Balaam’s blessings to the talking donkey. But as much as this parasha is about talking, it is also about seeing.
“And Balak the son of Beor saw, va’yar, all that Israel had done to the Amorites.” (Bamidbar 22:2).…

Much ink has been spilled by the commentators—classical and contemporary—to explain Moshe and Aharon’s sin of smiting the rock, but the matter remains quite opaque. Greater clarity can be gained by comparing the story of the smiting of the rock in our parasha with the hitting of the rock in Parashat Beshalach.…

As published in the Jerusalem Report, July 11, 2016
Is kedusha, holiness, a good thing or a bad thing? Certainly, in its privileged and particularist expressions it can lead to conflict, discord, war and violence. Fights over who has rights to sacred ground, which religion is holy and whose scripture is sacred have plagued us for centuries and have been the cause of immeasurable loss of life.…

The story of the spies returning with their evil report is well known, but the reason they were punished is not commonly understood. What did they do wrong? They reported what they saw accurately. Ramban suggests an answer. The key, he says, is in their use of the word efes, “however”: “However, the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great” (Bamidbar 13:28). Ramban says that efes means “nothing” here (it later came to mean “zero”): “Their wickedness was in their use of the word efes, which indicates that the matter is completely impossible” (Ramban on verse 27).…